


Requited

by selfinduced



Series: possession is nine tenths of the law [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e03 Parabatai Lost, M/M, Parabatai, Parabatai Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21844837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selfinduced/pseuds/selfinduced
Summary: If there's evil in him, just like his father, the least he can do is draw the monster away from everyone he loves. So he goes with Valentine.and,"You're hurt," Alec touches his face, the scrapes and bruises healing under his touch, and rests his fingers on his lips at the end.
Relationships: Alec Lightwood/Jace Wayland
Series: possession is nine tenths of the law [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1255451
Comments: 5
Kudos: 52





	Requited

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettysosharp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettysosharp/gifts).



> Set at the beginning of Season 2, Jace is being tortured by Valentine on the ship while Alec almost dies using the parabatai stone to track him and Jace brings him back by reciting the parabatai oath. Takes up where "possession is nine-tenths of the law" left off.

Maybe it's because he's Valentine's son.

He thought Clary would be safe, someone he could have for himself because she came with no one--and she turns out to be his sister--actual biological sister. There's not just darkness in him, he's sick. He knows that now.

And if there's evil in him, just like his father, the least he can do is draw the monster away from everyone he loves. So he goes with Valentine.

-

He knows Alec will come for him. With any luck he'll be dead by then. Their bond can't track over water, it'll buy enough time.

But the feeling of his parabatai is constant. Forever. And though he shouldn't, though he knows it's not the right thing, as long as Alec is out there, he can't quite let go. Can't bear the thought of Alec alone with half a soul. _Find a_ way, his bond whispers.

And the little boy who always found a way when Valentine left him out in the cold and drowned him in the frozen lake and sent him into a horde of demons alone--that little boy fights even harder than he had at five years old showing wolves he was more use hunting beside them than being hunted and earned a warm place to sleep for the night, at six cutting through ice with the razor blade he'd stolen from his father and squirreled away into his pocket, at nine, jumping high and fast enough back and forth up in the trees enough to blindside even demons made of shadow.

Clary was right: love makes you fight harder.

Outside he bleeds and throws out taunts just enough to keep Valentine entertained.

Inside, he memorizes guard patrol patterns--only four on rotation on the port-side if he can get to it--and turns to the Alec in his mind to plan.

Sometimes the pain is too much--not the physical, but the grief, the loss of the father he thought he had, the mother who tried to kill him because she knew, knew there was evil in him, and Jace had never felt it before, but it must be true--

"It's not," Alec whispers. Strokes his hair and kisses his forehead and forgives him for screaming, tells him he's an idiot for thinking he shouldn't, even as his hands cup Jace's cheek and the small of his back and presses Jace close into his chest--and they hug the way they don't in public, hug the way they do only when alone, where Jace's hands slide up to his shoulders and cling and Alec's palms slip under the hem of his shirt to press on skin, kissing his temple, and making him shiver. "I've got you. I'm here."

"I'm not good for you, you have to let me go," Jace tries, not sure if there's any good in him at all, and if he deserves to go back to Alec. He doesn't know anymore--maybe this is where he belongs.

"You belong with me," Alec pushes his face into Jace's.

And if Jace turns into it, their mouths are so close he could--but he can't--even in his head where none of this is real, he can't go where Alec might not want him to, can't go where they'll never be allowed to--

"Jace," Alec hugs him tighter, warm and safe and--

And fading, lost.

Jace feels sudden dread rising, and knows it's not just Alec panicking over trying to find him, no, this isn't imaginary Alec in his head, this is real. He found a way to come for Jace, some stupid, dangerous _thing_ , and now it's going to kill him.

-

He escapes.

It's Clary who manages to get to him because Alec, of course, is dying from trying to use a parabatai stone to track him.

Every anguish about who his father is and what it means that he was raised by a monster or the demon blood inside him, all of it pales to insignificance as he holds Alec in his arms. The real Alec this time—whose soul is far away even with Jace wrapped around his body.

Jace presses kisses all over his face. The forehead drenched in sweat, the dark hollows under his eyes, his cheeks —Jace can’t stop. Alec is everything. He has been since the moment they met, and being parabatai was the only thing that could encompass the way Alec filled up all the spaces Jace didn’t know he had inside him to be filled.

Jace has never had to think of being without Alec again since that day.

Everything inside him reaches out to surround Alec, pouring out in a flood of pure angelic power as if he'd drawn a thousand runes activating all at once, praying--

And it works.

Alec's hands clutch at him, desperate and clinging.

"You're hurt," Alec touches his face, the scrapes and bruises Jace doesn't even remember getting, and rests his fingers on his lips at the end.

Jace kisses his fingers, leans his face into Alec's palm, and Alec follows the path of his fingers with his mouth, over the cuts on Jace’s cheek. Jace can feel the wounds heal, all the broken and bleeding parts of him suffusing with the warmth of iratze and strength runes as if Alec is drawing them right over Jace's heart where it will work the fastest and strongest.

When he opens his eyes the blaze of power pouring out of him is visible, every rune on Alec’s body is glowing as if activated, as are his own, their parabatai runes almost blinding in intensity. Something _shifts_ inside him; inside them both, and it makes perfect sense. And when Alec leans close and their mouths touch, Jace presses forward into it, one more point of contact, energy transfer, air, and Alec's lips so soft, salty with tears when Jace forgets not to taste them and Alec cups the back of his head and slants his mouth to fit them together, all encompassing and blindingly perfect.

The glow blinks out abruptly when he hears Aldertree calling his name from outside the door and reality crashes down on them both.

-

It's understandable, he reasons as he paces the length of his cell in the City of Bones.

Alec is everything, he always has been, but Jace has never almost lost him like this before, he's never come home from the risk of never being with him again before. It's never been so urgent to hold him, touch him like Jace wants to climb inside him completely.

But the thing he hadn't accounted for, the thing that's the actual problem, bigger than being imprisoned by Silent Brothers, is that it was Alec.

It was Alec who had kissed him.


End file.
